Battle Station sf-5 Page 23

  She looked at me. “That’s the thing about you, Kyle,” she said softly. “Somehow, you are always self-assured. You always proceed without the slightest doubt.”

  “That’s a combination of a character flaw and an elaborate fiction,” I said. “It’s true, I choose a path and follow it tenaciously, but I’m not always sure it’s the right one.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she squinted at me. “You fake it?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, shrugging.

  She snorted softly and smiled. It was the first honest smile I’d seen on her face for months. I had a thought then-a nice thought. I considered reaching out my hand and clasping hers. I’m an impulsive guy, but I made no moves. I just returned her smile with one of my own. We both sat quietly for a few seconds, enjoying the moment.

  At that point, the ship’s inner wall melted. We both looked up in surprise. My surprise changed into shock as I saw who stood there in the opening. The nanites in the smart metal didn’t see too happy, either. The intruder moved faster than they did, not allowing them time to get out of the way. They moved in dribbles and slagged away from an outstretched, thin-fingered hand that punched its way through them.

  The figure was female, and she advanced into the room so quickly the nanites didn’t have time to dissolve completely. They stretched over her like a bubble-which quickly popped and sent bits of semi-liquid metal everywhere. It looked like a shower of mercury. The beads of nanites quickly found their brothers on the deck of the ship and merged together, smoothing out.

  The wall closed behind her again, and she loomed between us at the head of the conference table. She placed her palms flat on the table and suspiciously eyed each of us in turn.

  “I couldn’t take anymore whispering and giggling,” she said. “I could hear you right through these thin nanite walls, you know.”

  “Sandra!” I said, standing up. “I had no idea you’d come on this trip!”

  I was honestly glad to see her, even if she was in one of her jealousy-fueled moods. She looked at me with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

  “You didn’t think I’d let Jasmine come out here to see you alone, did you?”

  “Of course not,” I said, laughing nervously.

  Jasmine didn’t make eye-contact with either of us. I sensed these two had endured a tense voyage on the way out from Earth.

  I stepped to Sandra and attempted a hug. It was like hugging a manikin at first. She stiffened and I felt nothing but her bones and hard muscles. After a second however, she softened a little.

  Internally, I complimented myself. I was very glad I hadn’t grabbed Jasmine’s hand.

  — 29

  The conference shifted into a three-way affair after Sandra joined us. She sat with her eyes flashing back and forth. She didn’t talk much, but she didn’t have to. As always, it was easy to tell what she was thinking.

  “Well, Rear Admiral,” I said, “have you made up your mind yet?”

  “No,” Jasmine admitted.

  “What do you plan to do then?”

  “I’m going to give you some time,” she said. “I’m going to observe and help if needed. I’m going to investigate the situation for a few days.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help but think of how unhappy this decision would make Crow when he heard about it. He’d have to wonder if his gambit had failed utterly. Instead of embarrassing me into returning to Earth under the thumb of Jasmine in her new ship, he would have to worry I’d turned her back into one of my supporters and stolen a light cruiser as well as a key officer. It would be torture for him.

  “Wonderful!” I said. “That’s all I ask. An investigation-a hearing, so to speak.”

  Jasmine inclined her head slightly. Only Sandra looked unhappy. “We’re all going to sit out here?” she asked. “Waiting for what?”

  I glanced over at Sandra. She really didn’t belong in this high-level discussion. I was going to have to have a talk with her about that. I didn’t expect the talk would go smoothly.

  “We’re not sitting around. We’re building a new fleet-faster than we’ve ever done in the past. Your light cruiser will provide a welcome shift in firepower. How many are aboard her?”

  “Seventy,” Jasmine said. “Thirty crewmen and a full platoon of forty marines.”

  “Excellent!” I said, honestly excited. “We started out here with less than three hundred marines, and we can really use the reinforcements.”

  Jasmine looked uncomfortable. We both knew that she hadn’t been sent out here to reinforce me. But sometimes if you took things for granted, they went your way.

  “I will return to Goa and brief my officers,” Jasmine said, standing up. I did the same.

  No one saluted, but I didn’t make a fuss about it. She had moved in my direction, and I really did need her help.

  The second she left, Sandra leaned close and hissed a lot of words at me: “You should have let me kill her when I had the chance back on Andros. No one would have doubted she was a traitor.”

  “But she wasn’t the traitor, Sandra,” I said calmly. “Lieutenant Colonel Barrera was the one behind the assassination attempts.”

  “Not a traitor? Look how she’s sucked up to Crow. She’s playing you both. You are blinded by her soft voice and pretty face. She’s probably been playing footsie with Crow as well. How can men be such fools?”

  I thought about what Sandra was saying. Could it be true? After Barrera had turned on me, I now took such allegations more seriously. My officers were only human, after all. They had ambitions and plans of their own. Still, I’d been through a lot with Jasmine Sarin and I felt I knew her enough to trust her. She could be misled, but she wasn’t a devious schemer like Crow. I reminded myself that Sandra had an agenda of her own when it came to Jasmine.

  “I think she’d misguided, but not a traitor.”

  “She’s gone Fleet!”

  “Last I checked, that wasn’t against the Star Force handbook.”

  “There is no handbook.”

  “I’m working on that.”

  Sandra crossed her arms and pouted. She’d failed to get me to declare Jasmine a threat, so she was far from happy.

  “You need to get your jealousy under control, Sandra,” I told her. “Try to think professionally. We’re all in this together. The machines are the real enemy.”

  Sandra softened and nodded. “You’re right about that. But don’t think everyone is in complete agreement with you. Things are going strangely back home, Kyle. That is another reason I insisted on coming out here.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Crow is gathering power. He’s like some kind of spider. He’s got all the factories under his control now.”

  I wasn’t surprised by that, and I couldn’t really object. When I’d left Andros island, our fortifications had been devastated.

  “Has he rebuilt the island defenses?”

  “He did that first, but he only repaired one of the central forts. The other two are still in ruins.”

  I frowned. “What’s he been doing with all his output?”

  “What do you think? He’s been building ships. Not just this light cruiser, either. He’s got two more ships just like it. And two wings of new destroyers.”

  I nodded. Crow had always believed the fleet was more important than our ground forces. He’d finally gotten his way by gaining full control over our Nano factory output.

  “None of that sounds sinister to me,” I told Sandra. “I might have done the same.”

  “That’s not the creepy part. There are visitors, coming to Fort Pierre all the time now. General Kerr and others. People from Europe and Asia. Military people and spooks. They come to talk to Crow, to have private conferences with him.”

  I thought about that for a second. I didn’t like the sound of it. “All right, I should have suspected that would happen. We’ve been gone for months, and I knew he’d been working with outside militaries. Maybe he just wants to get design input from the most talen
ted people he can find. After all, we were almost wiped out the last time the Macros came to Earth. More cooperation-”

  “Don’t you get it, Kyle?” she demanded. “He’s not just building up, he’s setting up some kind of coup.”

  I snorted and almost laughed. “A coup? Against whom? I’m not a king, you know. I’m a Colonel who runs the marines.”

  “You were the sole commander who fought the Macros to a standstill last time they came. It won’t be the same when you return.”

  “What do you want me to do about that?” I asked. “Are you in Jasmine’s camp? Do you want me to go back now and straighten Crow out?”

  She heaved a sigh and looked uncertain. “I don’t think so,” she said. “You aren’t strong enough now.”

  “Strong enough for what?”

  She looked at me intently. “When you go back to Earth, Kyle, you should have a massive fleet behind you. Enough ships to take Earth, if necessary.”

  I did laugh this time. “I don’t want to do that! I’ve never even considered such a thing.”

  “Then you should bring the Macros home on your tail, like you did last time. Then they will need you. They will let you fight for them, and save them again.”

  I shook my head, bemused. I looked into her face, and as far as I could tell, she was serious. “I thought heroes were given a party.”

  “Not always. Sometimes they are feared, or blamed for not doing their jobs perfectly.”

  I thought about what she was saying. It was true that history was full of heroes who’d been turned into villains by whoever wrote the books later on. Everyone feared the man who marched home with a conquering army. Many had wanted George Washington to be declared King of the United States after the revolution. Others had tried to assassinate him. It was all a matter of perspective.

  I reached out and clasped my hand over Sandra’s. She flinched, but then relaxed and smiled at me. I smiled back. Inside, I was full of doubts. But it felt good to have my girlfriend smiling at my touch again. It had been a long time-too long.

  “Colonel?” a voice squawked from the ceiling. I knew it wasn’t a speaker that made the sound, but rather the nanite walls that vibrated to recreate the voice.

  “Yes, Captain Miklos?”

  “Could you come out of the conference room now? We have a situation.”

  Heaving a sigh, I stood up. “I’ll be right there.”

  I headed toward the wall that led onto the command deck. I never made it. Sandra grabbed me from behind and kissed my neck.

  “Let’s do it,” she whispered in my ear. “Right here on this table.”

  “Uh,” I said, tempted. “It has to wait for a bit. Can you hold that mood for an hour?”

  “Maybe,” she said, still hissing in my ear. I could feel her hot breath on my skin. “But I make no promises.”

  We had to leave it at that. I exited the room and Sandra followed. I could tell from her attitude, she was back in bodyguard-mode. She eyed everyone with quiet suspicion.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, but no one bothered to answer me. They just gestured toward the big screen.

  The image displayed on the pool-table sized command screen was of the inner planets. Eden-1 to Eden-11 circled the yellow star. At the very outer edge of the map, the gas giant Eden-12 swung around. I looked at the gas giant first. The swarm of Nano ships still hung there in orbit, depicted with a cautionary yellow. The system did that when it wasn’t sure if a contact was friend or foe.

  My eyes drifted toward the inner worlds. My own cluster of destroyers sat in a ring around the Centaur habitat satellite. We were displaying most of our gunships. We had built twenty-one now and new ones were produced several times a day.

  Last, my eyes moved sunward toward the Macro-controlled worlds. They weren’t all lined up, of course. Some drifted far away, circling around the far side of the star. Three of them were in our general vicinity, Eden-9 being the closest of the pack.

  As I watched, new arcs flickered into life on the screen. The Macro ships were on the move. Vessels left orbit from each of the most distant systems. They were moving to Eden-9, to the world orbiting closest to Eden-11, the single planet under our control.

  “The Macros are on the move?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “How many contacts do we have there? I see two ships.”

  “Those are groups of ships,” Miklos said. He zoomed in, and I saw that both the arcs coming from the far side were made up of four cruisers in a familiar, diamond-shaped formation.

  Alarmed, I reached out and made stretching motions with my fingers. I expanded the section of the nearest world, Eden-9. There had been two ships there yesterday. Now, there were seven. Additionally, they were moving up more ships, sending them forward from all five of their garrisoned planets.

  I straightened my spine. “Summarize, Miklos.”

  “They are leaving one ship at each planet to guard it, but sending everything else to Eden-9.”

  “How many ships total?”

  “They will have twenty-nine ships at our doorstep within twenty-four hours, sir. Plus their reserve garrisons and whatever else they produce in the meantime.”

  I stared until my eyes stung. They were out producing us after all, and they knew it. If they struck immediately, I had about as many little gunships as they had cruisers. But these ships were not equal in power. Their bigger vessels could take much more punishment and were armed with missiles. I had a sinking feeling.

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?” Miklos asked.

  “Talk to me.”

  “All they have to do is fly over here and smash into us.”

  “A typical Macro strategy,” I agreed. “But we have no choice but to defend Eden-11. If we run, they will kill the Centaurs, retake the factories and our production will drop to zero.”

  “But even if they lose their entire fleet, they can build another. We have limited manpower and only one big factory.”

  “Don’t forget the two Nano factories.”

  Miklos shrugged. “They are out producing us ten to one in mass, even if our designs are more efficient. They will overrun us eventually.”

  I didn’t argue further, because I couldn’t.

  — 30

  Rear Admiral Sarin requested another private meeting less than an hour later. I agreed with reservations, and ignored Sandra’s stern gaze. How could I refuse to meet with her? I needed her ship. Goa had the firepower of three destroyers. The ship’s lasers were larger and longer ranged than anything else I had. Those guns could be instrumental in shooting down incoming enemy missiles, if it came down to that. And I felt pretty strongly that it would.

  To counter the threat from the Macros, I ordered all my gunships to show themselves in formation. Groups of five were ordered to fly up and down to the planet at various points, and flying back up again from somewhere else. My forces had to appear to be bigger than they really were in order to give the Macros something to worry about. They liked to fight with overwhelming numerical superiority, and they usually waited until they had the numbers. I wanted to make them think twice before attacking.

  Still, I knew this delaying tactic, even if successful, wasn’t going to save my forces in the coming battle. They just had too many factories, and they were building cruisers almost as fast as I built gunships. This was because they had so many more factories than we did. I readjusted my previous estimates, and now figured they had three factories per planet. Four factories must be operating on Eden-9 alone, where the transport had fled with the last facility lifted from Eden-11. Even though it took much longer to build a cruiser than it did a gunship, they had an estimated sixteen factories and I couldn’t face that level of output for long.

  My attention naturally turned to the Nano ships, still on station in a mass around Eden-12.

  “If we could only get the Nano ships to join us, we could take them out right now,” I said. “Any more successful contacts, Marvin?”

  “Nothin
g new, Colonel Riggs,” Marvin said. “They simply repeat the requirement that we speak with their commanders.”

  “How are we supposed to do that? Do they expect me to fly to the gas giant and land on it?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What is the gravitational pull down there?” I asked.

  “About two point five times that of Earth.”

  I blinked in surprise. “Why is that? I thought I’d be instantly crushed if I went to a planet with that much mass.”

  “This is a common misperception,” Marvin admitted. “The gas giant is over three hundred times the total mass of Earth, but it is far less dense. If it was compressed to a solid ball, it would collapse a human body standing on the surface. The real problem with visitation is its lack of a solid surface. The semi-gaseous, semi-liquid matter that makes up Eden-12 is quite unlike the atmosphere of rocky worlds like Eden-11 or Earth. It is-cloud-like.”

  I thought about that. I’d understood these things, but hadn’t thought of such a place in terms of visiting there. I shook my head, was I actually considering taking the Blues up on their nebulous invitation to visit their nebulous homeworld?

  “What about temperature? Wind velocities?”

  “Colonel Riggs?” Sandra asked, interrupting me.

  I looked at her. She gave me a fake, sweet smile. “You aren’t honestly thinking of trying to walk on this hydrogen-methane waterbed, are you?”

  “Well, I don’t know. If we could somehow talk them into joining us, it might be worth the risk. Together, our fleets could push the Macros out of this system. I’m sure of it.”

  Sandra compressed her lips into a tight line. “Maybe Marvin should do it. He can survive temperatures and levels of pressure a living creature never could.”

  Up until this moment, Marvin had been focusing most of his cameras on the various screens and different people’s faces. But at this point I gained four cameras, while Sandra warranted three. I glanced at him, and saw the lenses rotate and zoom. He was trying to catch my expression from many different angles to analyze it.